SLN Logistics

Sigs wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:This means, any fleet trains that were present, stay in hyper until sent for, especially on attacks where the attacker isn't quite sure they'll win.

Was that a thing in 1905 or was it a thing after the start of the Second war? I am not entirely sure either way but I am leaning that the staying in hyper was developed after Second Battle of Marsh when Haven started copying the RMN's tactics in that Battle.

That only seemed to have started by the second war, with podnoughts on both sides. The only mention of fleet train prior to the surprise strike opener of the Second War, was McQueen scaring up additional fleet train for Giscard & Tourville post-Icarus. There were later mentions of more fleet train, when Saint-Just and Pierre overrode her and told her to accelerate her operational tempo (mention of Giscard/Tourville needing to be able to handle more cripples in-site rather than turning over to yards and related content).

But the Fleet Train are very notable as 'not' being there, so the "stay in hyper" trick, seems to have always been applied to the train (for offensive operations), and/or in a secured forward system for after you've retreated.

Eighth Fleet during Buttercup seems to have operated in both modus operandi, with forward systems being fortified and supplied with pods and hospital ships, which is what Terekhov was captured trying to protect. But they also possibly operated in the forward method, when it was the ballistic LAC strikes we saw Scotty Tremaine lead (after Eighth Fleet wiped out Barnett).

Haven seemed to have only operated in forward, secure system manner for their Twelfth Fleet, and then started adopting more Manticoran tactics, after returning to being the Republic and exchanging to podnoughts as First & Second Fleets.


And actually, to amend my original observation, we have two instances of some form of fleet train accompanying the warships across the hyperwall. First, the one I mentioned Protector's Own arriving in Marsh and then playing "guess who?" with Honor's staffers. This being prior to the Second Battle of Marsh, with the Thunderbolt surprise attack, is unlikely to be standard doctrine just yet.

Second instance, was Terekhov in Monica, the ammunition ship (Volcano wasnt it?) accompanied the cruisers into normal space, dropped off a bunch of pods, and then stayed outside the hyper limit without actually popping back into hyper.

Somtaaw wrote:And actually, to amend my original observation, we have two instances of some form of fleet train accompanying the warships across the hyperwall. First, the one I mentioned Protector's Own arriving in Marsh and then playing "guess who?" with Honor's staffers. This being prior to the Second Battle of Marsh, with the Thunderbolt surprise attack, is unlikely to be standard doctrine just yet.

Second instance, was Terekhov in Monica, the ammunition ship (Volcano wasnt it?) accompanied the cruisers into normal space, dropped off a bunch of pods, and then stayed outside the hyper limit without actually popping back into hyper.

I can think of two more examples. Fourth Yeltsin - the Peep transports stayed with Theisman's task group, but they did come out of hyper. And Cerberus, when the joint PN-SS task force brought their troop transports in behind them(though to be fair, they'd assumed no enemy mobile forces would be present).

munroburton wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:And actually, to amend my original observation, we have two instances of some form of fleet train accompanying the warships across the hyperwall. First, the one I mentioned Protector's Own arriving in Marsh and then playing "guess who?" with Honor's staffers. This being prior to the Second Battle of Marsh, with the Thunderbolt surprise attack, is unlikely to be standard doctrine just yet.

Second instance, was Terekhov in Monica, the ammunition ship (Volcano wasnt it?) accompanied the cruisers into normal space, dropped off a bunch of pods, and then stayed outside the hyper limit without actually popping back into hyper.

I can think of two more examples. Fourth Yeltsin - the Peep transports stayed with Theisman's task group, but they did come out of hyper. And Cerberus, when the joint PN-SS task force brought their troop transports in behind them(though to be fair, they'd assumed no enemy mobile forces would be present).

With both Monica and Fourth Yeltsin, the fleet train while coming out of hyper with the attack force, it stayed out beyond or at least close to the hyper limit, under the assumption that if things went badly they could hyper out before being engaged.

munroburton wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:And actually, to amend my original observation, we have two instances of some form of fleet train accompanying the warships across the hyperwall. First, the one I mentioned Protector's Own arriving in Marsh and then playing "guess who?" with Honor's staffers. This being prior to the Second Battle of Marsh, with the Thunderbolt surprise attack, is unlikely to be standard doctrine just yet.

Second instance, was Terekhov in Monica, the ammunition ship (Volcano wasnt it?) accompanied the cruisers into normal space, dropped off a bunch of pods, and then stayed outside the hyper limit without actually popping back into hyper.

I can think of two more examples. Fourth Yeltsin - the Peep transports stayed with Theisman's task group, but they did come out of hyper. And Cerberus, when the joint PN-SS task force brought their troop transports in behind them(though to be fair, they'd assumed no enemy mobile forces would be present).

I'd nitpick that assault transports, filled with infantry weapons in the case of Fourth Yeltsin and prisoner enclosements in Cerberus, should not be lumped in with Fleet Train. Fleet Train compose of freighters configured with simplified version of podnought rails, hospital ships, there were mention of repair ships that could handle work smaller than it takes a full up shipyard for, and other related ships.

The assault transports in both cases you mention, were actually intended to be used in conjunction with the warships. Escorted right to Masada high orbit, or right to Seaford Nine shipyard's.


The two cases I mentioned the transports & freighters had zero combat intentions. Terekhov and the ammunition ship Volcano which the moment it's logistical role of deploying pods finished, stayed entirely out of the fight in Monica. Not only did she stay out of the fight between Terekhov and the mobile Indefatiguables, she almost wasn't called in because Terekhov had to take a moment to remember he even had an ammunition ship at his disposal. Which would make sense, at the time he was still merely a captain and never truly engaged in squadron level operations where Fleet Train would be made available to him. Even his last stand at Hyacinth was merely as one ship, acting in concert with others but no flag officer present.

And the Protector's Own arriving in Marsh, obviously weren't going to see combat, but we got the mention of what was there, the organic support fleet which explained how Benjamin got the deployment through. They wouldn't be consuming foodstuffs, or spare parts from the Marsh system, and officially weren't deploy to Marsh, merely a long distance training operation under the supervision of Admiral Harrington in her official role as the senior officer.

Somtaaw wrote:But the Fleet Train are very notable as 'not' being there, so the "stay in hyper" trick, seems to have always been applied to the train (for offensive operations), and/or in a secured forward system for after you've retreated.

There's another option, that's pretty damned secure from intererence. Even the best system's sensor arrays have a reach of light months - but there are light years between even adjacent system. If you drop the fleet train off somewhere from 1-3 LY from the target the chance of even a massive search finding them is essentially non-existant. But they're close at hand, in an area nobody is going to accidentally travel through, and not subject to the increased radiation of hyper. So it wouldn't mater if all the surrounding systems, even the unihabited ones, were heavily picketed because you're beyond sensor range of any of them.


On the other hand, we did see even relatively early in the first war that there was an example of ships being held (temporarily) in hyper. The convoy escort SOP that Honor was executing when she was captured required the freighters to hold in hyper, roughly at the hyper limit, while a small force (1 CA in this case) was given time to probed deeper into the system and see if everything was okay.
And that was just as a routine precaution against a system being captured - not an attack on a known hostile system.

But clearly the idea that ships could hide nearby, in hyper, undetected wasn't new, even by early in the first war -- and probably long before then.

Though it wasn't until you got FTL comms that it was practical to use stealthed warships to carry timely messages plans to a fleet hiding in hyper; letting them be incorporated in coordinated plans by the in-system defenders -- to catch the enemy between them.

You'd want, normally, to have your train readily available. Extra ammo, emergency evacuation of damaged ships, all sorts of things that are useful whether you win or lose.

While there are security concerns in logistics, there are likely to be plenty of civilian contracts involved. So an area rife for corruption. Since there likely to be a lot of money involved, they could use records to target key aspects. Enough to pull down the whole system.

Somtaaw wrote:


But the Fleet Train are very notable as 'not' being there, so the "stay in hyper" trick, seems to have always been applied to the train (for offensive operations), and/or in a secured forward system for after you've retreated.

I would think that until the deep raid became a thing there were bases close enough to the target system to keep the fleet train there. The fleet train is not needed immediately unless you are Tourville and need to rearm your SD(P)'s for round 2. So both Haven and the RMN keeping their fleet train away from the battlefield makes sense.

kzt wrote:You'd want, normally, to have your train readily available. Extra ammo, emergency evacuation of damaged ships, all sorts of things that are useful whether you win or lose.

I would argue emergency evacuation of ships is not an issue, either you win and have all the time in the world to patch up a ship or you lose and scuttle the ship rather than risk losing a repair ship trying to fix it or evacuate it.

Sigs wrote:I would argue emergency evacuation of ships is not an issue, either you win and have all the time in the world to patch up a ship or you lose and scuttle the ship rather than risk losing a repair ship trying to fix it or evacuate it.

You can trivially fit a DD into a standard commercial freighter. IIRC, you can just fit it in sideways. Up through BC it's not a big deal to get them out, as you can fit them in a modified freighter. DN and above are not so easy.